Baron Rivendare's stats were lackluster, he costs a bit too much to play on curve, since usually your turn 4 is dedicated to more powerful drops, and battlecry's in general will always be under your control. There's no way to reliably control Rivendare triggering unless you already have a large amount of board control in which case he is a "win-more" card. But if you don't have board, he gets traded into and never procs his effect and is basically useless.

Brann on the other hand has decent stats, a cheap cost that facilitates being played with other cards and an effect that will only improve as more and more powerful battlecry minions are added into the game. Already with WotOG, we have Ancient Shieldbearer, Twin Emperor Vek'lor and C'Thun that all are augmented to absurd levels by Brann. I can't wait to see what else this guy can do in future expansions. The sky is the limit. We have another year of LoE being in standard so that's 5 more expansions potentially with new cards to get abused.

Totally agree with your analysis of Brann... he's definitely one the best designed Legendaries in the game (along with most of the LoE ones, really).

Minor nitpick, but Brann will rotate out of Standard after the first expansion is released in 2017, so we've only got him for another year. Each time Standard changes, cards from two calendar years or before rotate out. This time, it was 2014 (Naxx & GvG), next year all the sets from 2015 go to Wild (BRM, TGT, LoE). So that's two, maybe three more expansions before the Year of the Kraken ends and he's out.

It's kind of sad that the release schedule means that LoE will rotate out so quickly, especially since there are so many great cards in that set (well, barring the ever-present Tunnel Trogg, maybe). But hey... he's sure to be wild in Wild for a long time to come!

Just had the best opening ever thanks to this card (and a slow start from my opponent).

I was playing a Malygos Dragon Warlock deck and my opponent was a Hunter. My turns were as follows:

T1: Zombie Chow

T2: Life Tap

T3: Brann Bronzebeard

T4: Twilight Drake with double battlecry (making it a 4/11)

T5: At this point, I've made a few trades, but all my minions are still alive. I play dark peddler with double battlecry, pick 1 is a blood imp (luckily soulfire wasn't an option or else the next part wouldn't have happened), pick 2 is a Reliquary Seeker. I play my second zombie chow, then blood imp. If you're keeping track, this leaves me with 6 minions on board and one more mana. This allows me to drop the Reliquary Seeker with double battlecry (making it a 9/9).